There is no question that in today's world of athletic performance that we are at a crisis state. Injuries are off the scale. We have athletes at the elite level who are extremely proficient in their particular sport but lack fundamental movement skills. When they get outside that small envelope where they are highly adapted and have to do unusual movements that are demanded in the random chaotic nature of the game they are at high risk of injury. Why? Because they have poor movement ABCs, they are physically illiterate. We have a crisis of physical illiteracy. We are asking the athletes to write the great American novel and they don't even know the alphabet. It starts with assessment. How and what we assess sends a message. So in assessment what we need to do is assess physical literacy, find out what they can do and use that as a starting point.
A good physical competency assessment looks at the ability to reach, bend, push, pull, squat, rotate, and brace. All of these are key elements of the athletic ABCs, the alphabet we are going to ask the athlete to write their great American novel with. So we want teach them how to combine these movements in coordinated patterns so that they can then produce smooth efficient technique required by their sport. So they are ready to reduce and produce force in random chaotic patterns. Therefore the assessment must incorporate all of these elements to help determine where the athlete falls on a continuum of functional progression. Everybody can’t start at the same place. Use assessment to find out where the athlete is now, what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses and then design an optimal program to fit them as individuals in the context of their sport. This will teach and reinforce the ABC’s of movement and stem the tide of physical illiteracy.